Paris Hub

Between giving bigot Bill Donohue a platform to spout his hatred and glibly comparing a fight for LGBT rights to the abominable attack on Charlie Hebdo, Fox News has done anything but handle political discussion around Paris, France with the objective professionalism one would expect from a station that dares call itself a "news" source. In fact, their coverage has reached such an offensive point that Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has announced plans to sue the media giant.

CNN's Christiane Amanpour broke the news over Twitter:

BREAKING: Paris is going to sue @FoxNews after image of Paris was “insulted” and “prejudiced,” Mayor @Anne_Hidalgo tells me.

"As no one could advance, my neighbor opened her windows and started to play classic tunes, to the delight of the audience. A great moment."

The rally in Paris combine with those held across France drew crowds of 3.7 million people, according to CNN.

Meanwhile, President Obama came under criticism for not attending the rally which saw a broad swath of world leaders in attendance including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. As The Washington Post reports, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest commented, “I think it’s fair to say that we should have sent someone with a higher profile." The U.S. was represented at the rally by Ambassador to France Jane Hartley.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla) said of the President's absence,

“I understand that when the president travels, he brings with him a security and communications package which is intense. And I understand you drop that into the middle of something like this, it could be disruptive,” Rubio said. “There’s a plethora of people they could have sent. I think in hindsight I hope that they would have done it differently.”

For his part, Secretary of State John Kerry called the hullabaloo surrounding the President's absence, "quibbling a little bit."

In Paris, however, President Obama's absence was hardly felt, with many dubious of the presence of foreign leaders to begin with:

“I consider these heads of state to be taking part in my march,” said Thierry, a 56-year-old painter, who declined to give his last name because of fears of terrorism. “I’m not taking part in theirs.”

French President Francois Hollande was joined by other heads of state and dignitaries -- several who linked arms.

At the very front of the march was Dalil Boubakeur, the rector of the Great Mosque of Paris and president of the French Council of the Muslim Faith.

French officials announced "exceptional measures" to protect not only the throngs expected to gather near the Place de la Republique in central Paris, but also a veritable who's who of foreign leaders -- a test of the security forces of a nation rocked by days of terrorist violence.

Watch live footage of the rally as well as video of the world leaders marching together, AFTER THE JUMP...

Fox News contributor and radio talk show host Erick Erickson boldly declared "the terrorists won in Atlanta," just hours after Paris' horrific terrorist attack, blaming the LGBT community for the firing of Atlanta's anti-gay Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran reports Media Matters For America.

Right-wing media falsely claimed that Cochran was fired because of his religious beliefs and anti-gay remarks in a book he wrote. On Jan. 6, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed debunked those claims and said that Cochran was fired because the chief displayed a lack of judgment in distributing the book to his employees, and disregarded instructions regarding his month-long suspension over publishing the book without notice to the city is what led to his termination.

On Jan. 7, just hours after the horrific attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris that left 12 people dead, Erickson wrote an opportunistic blog post likening the LGBT community to terrorists for objecting to the former fire chief's book stating, "The terrorists won."

An excerpt from Erickson's post reads:

"A publisher published something that offended. It mocked, it offended, and it showed the fallacy of a religion. It angered.

"So the terrorists decided they needed to publicly destroy and ruin the publisher in a way that would not only make that destruction a public spectacle, but do it so spectacularly that others would think twice before publishing or saying anything similar.

"The terrorist wants to sow fear. The destruction of an individual is not just meant to be a tool of vengeance, but a tool of instruction. It shows others what will happen to them if they dare do the same. It is generates self-regulating peer pressure. Others, fearing the fall out, will being to self-police and self-regulate. They will silence others on behalf of the terrorists. Out of fear, they will drive the ideas from the public square and society will make them off limits.

[...]

"So they demanded the Mayor of Atlanta fire the Chief of the Fire Department for daring to write that his first duty was to "glory God" and that any sex outside of heterosexual marriage was a sin.

French police on Friday killed the two brothers suspected of murdering 12 people at a Paris newspaper on Wednesday and freed his hostage unharmed, the authorities said. The police launched a simultaneous raid on a kosher supermarket in Paris where an alleged associate of the brothers was holding an unnamed number of hostages. At least some of hostages escaped unharmed, according to the police.

France is once again on high alert this morning as two standoffs with gunmen are underway in and around Paris. CNN reports that authorities have not said if and how the situations are related, but one involves the two brothers wanted in the Charlie Hebdo massacre that claimed the lives of 12 people (10 journalists and two police officers) Wednesday.

In Dammartin-en-Goele, about 25 miles northeast of Paris, thousands of antiterrorism forces encircled a commercial building, where the armed pair suspected in the newspaper massacre was holed up with at least one hostage.

A police source said several people were taken hostage at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris after a shootout involving a man armed with two guns.

The source said he bore a resemblance to the gunman suspected of killing a policewoman in a separate shooting in southern Paris on Thursday and believed to be a member of the same jihadist group, Butte Chaumont, as the two Hebdo suspects.

Police released pictures of a 32-year-old man, Amedy Coulibaly, and a 26-year-old woman, Hayat Boumeddiene, wanted in connection with the southern Paris incident.

CNN adds that French President Francoise Hollande held a crisis meeting Friday afternoon with senior Cabinet members at the Elysee palace in Paris.

Watch Sky News' live coverage of the developing story, AFTER THE JUMP...

While the rest of the world gathered at protests last night to condemn the attack on the offices of French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and the #IAmCharlie and #JeSuisCharlie hashtags trended globally, Donohue issued a statement titled “Muslims Are Right To Be Angry” in which he condemned the publication for offending Islam and other world religions.

While Donohue begins his statement by condemning those responsible for “killing in response to insult”, he adds in a big, big “but” by blaming Charlie Hebdo publisher Stephane Charbonnier for his own death:

“What happened in Paris cannot be tolerated. But neither should we tolerate the kind of intolerance that provoked this violent reaction.

“Those who work at this newspaper have a long and disgusting record of going way beyond the mere lampooning of public figures, and this is especially true of their depictions of religious figures. For example, they have shown nuns masturbating and popes wearing condoms. They have also shown Muhammad in pornographic poses.

“Stephane Charbonnier, the paper’s publisher, was killed today in the slaughter. It is too bad that he didn’t understand the role he played in his tragic death. In 2012, when asked why he insults Muslims, he said, “Muhammad isn’t sacred to me.” Had he not been so narcissistic, he may still be alive. Muhammad isn’t sacred to me, either, but it would never occur to me to deliberately insult Muslims by trashing him.”

Earlier today, we reported on a second shooting in Paris as police continued their search for the gunmen involved in the Charlie Hebdo shooting.

Watch Donohue's sickening comments via Fox News and see some Charlie Hebdo cartoons in English and global media reactions to the attacks, AFTER THE JUMP...

As a Christmas gift to world, Donohue unveiled a billboard in Los Angeles last month comparing the experiences of American “Christians” - the ones who spend their lives spreading anti-gay messages - and Christians facing persecution in ISIS-controlled territories.